Painter's Disease

Kaosu Narvna 2021

Mama lights the lamp for me—she tells me each morning to be careful, as if I don’t know the glass is cracked at the top. “Don’t kick it over with those oars o yours,” she tells me, “Don’t want the coop catchin’.”

She wakes me before the sun does like normal, before the geese start honkin’ and hollerin’ in their special house. I’m two goose tall, Mama’s almost four she says—two times too big for fetching eggs from under the young layers, Mama’s got bad knees. The old geese need to replace themselves soon, they get to keep the clutch. We lose too many geese to eat all the eggs. She bundles me up too much, she says “it’s too chilly in the spring mornings, what if it starts pissing again? Don’t wander far.”

I stuff my puffy goat mittens into my coat once I’m out the door, they make it hard to hold little lantern’s teacup handle, the little reed basket for egg holding. The geese start fussing at their door when Mama’s shuts. Light comes over the edge of the earth, over the last trees and around the tall-tall hill. Stars disappear each minute, the black sky ripens like a big apricot—that’s when the geese fuss most. They can’t see but they know, a clock inside their head knows when the sun stops sleeping.

The goose house is short, not far above my head—it doesn’t need to be tall, the geese ain’t. It’s a little wooden house made from young trees and sliced wood, the door’s some old, crooked fencing from before grandma got blind with the goats, confused, tired, laid down and slept. My sisters, too—we never met. The latch on their door is old and heavy—it was in the last one too Mama says, and the one before that, maybe longer. It’s a smooth white metal stick, bent at one end for pullin’. Mama always says “Be gentle with it, it dings easy, every year another dimple. Someday it might just snap, and then how will we keep a goose from gettin’ loose?” I set my lantern down in the wet grass, out of the goose path—opening the door’s a two-hand job for a two-goose boy. It pops free of the little hole it’s sits in, through the block nailed onto the door, and out the wall. She swings open on her crooked-hung hinges, opening is easier than closing, but you won’t get hit with closing. Closing’s Mama’s job, Mama says I’m too weak now.

They come to life with their horn song, squeaking and yelling as the young and lively blunder out the door. The broody stay behind, only one’s so early today—most’ll make their nests in summer, maybe autumn. A few still rest in their straw scraps, wood dust, feathers, and poo. The ganders book for the little pond the rain fills, biting the butts of grey goslings. That’s the good water pond, Mama says—the pump don’t work no more, no one can fix it neither. Creek water tastes like a spoon, can’t drink it. Boil and strain the pond water when the rain barrel runs dry, best Mama can do. If it rests in the jug all night the black falls to the bottom sometimes, silver dust too.

I walk slow over the mucky floor—Mama will scrape it with the broom when they’re all out, swimming. Just three eggs, two dry, one sticky—all go in the basket. I don’t search the tired ones, if they’ve got eggs, they can have them. They’re stinky birds, old ones extra stinky.

Two geese in the house—I walk down towards the pond. The grass slippy, ‘specially on the slope. Goats stomp the ground to mud. We don’t need to open their house in the morning, it stays open save for storm. We had more goats before the dog went away. Mama said some time ago, “Spanker kicked the bucket last night Baby, won’t be seeing him no more.” The bucket looked just fine, he was a big dog, almost two goose tall. Don’t know why the bucket disappeared him, maybe he felt sad.

Taking count is easy—geese move slow on the small pond, feet not far from the bottom, kicking mud. One, two, three—five—eight, two oldies in the house—O! One tail-up in the pond, where’s twelve? She isn’t in the pond, nor hiding in the goat legs. Goats scatter bout the pasture, sticking to the shrubby parts. There are no new fruit trees, and the garden can’t live here. “Field never stops gettin’ wider” Mama says, “soon they eat the hills.” Someone else in the village gardens, we have potato plants in the broken buckets, but they always come out wrong.

 

I hear rustle in the bush, a scrawny white stem shooting out the ferns—and I run with my basket, I run spitting mud behind me. “Don’t you be going for the crick!” I yell in my head. Normal screaming makes them faster. It’s easier to catch a runaway goose when they’re chunky. Another billy been possessed at night, we eat careful now, can’t lose no goose—but she’s gone.

The woods are bigger in the morning, so many sounds and moving shadows without sources. The sun isn’t here to dance on the moss like it usually does, only the lightnin’ critters now, and the stars in the corners of your eyes. Mama says only old painters see them lights, grandma too before she slept. I lost the Goose already—everything rustles and shakes and makes footsteps, the death caps become false geese unless I look straight. “Honn! Houn!” I holler for her, the only honk I hear is mine.

“Only walk in straight lines in that damn forest," I repeat what Mama says, “You come right back on your own path.” Every direction looks straight. Lights between angry tree roots steal your eyes. The false-geese writhe in the wind, I stomp them, they won’t trick me again. Mama says I can’t eat the mushrooms or I’ll get sicker.

O! The creek burbles and chirps with the crickets and birds—it runs down into home, I can get there when I find Goose. The great round trees thin for it, only sick little saplings stand there with all its little rocks and soggy weed—Mama calls the rocks Bad Slag. I dip my toes in the forbidden water, talking to myself, “All the ground wet, Mama won’t know.” Mama gets angry when I don’t come home fast, her footsteps follow me everywhere now. The crinkled surface shines with green flashes of light, though the fireflies are sleeping in the morning. They dance up the stream, and I follow them—they run from me. I put the best rocks in my basket—metal eggs, red eggs, grey eggs with brown and green spots, bright eggs that run into the mud when I grab them. A metal plate red with age stand out the ground, she says “C A U T I O M” I know the letters but not words, “U N P B O T E G T E D  S H A F T S”, Mama not here to read for me. Big white feathers hide in bundles of reeds.

 

I follow the creek all the way to its start—it comes down the hill when it rains, it used to be stronger, it used to be gone before that Mama says. A fat tube wiggles into the stream how lazy accordions droop, buried in grass and pebbles and dirt. It lights up softly, a snake that swallowed a firefly. I turn its mouth into an ear, “Goose?” I laugh. “GOOOSE?” I hear my voice yell somewhere else.

The hose came out of the ground. I think it was a giant worm that couldn’t get all the way in the water—it could eat a Goose. The ground falls away following the hose, it’s naked. It makes rotten log sounds. There’s a smooth hose up close reaching for the skies—it sounds different. There’s a great square hole where the ground hose meets the tall-tall hill, old wood stickin’ out it and half a tiny house grown with weed—rotten logs and split wood. It’d have been no bigger than the coop—with a hole like that, maybe a well gone bad. Wood splinters and a red metal wheel stick in the semi-soft mud. I wish I kept my shoes on. I pull on a black wiggly rope, it slops out the hole. The wood out the hole’s a blackened ladder, lit by the secret lights. There’s a bucket like the one Spanker kicked down there, but more broke.

There’s a sof lightnin’ light at the bottom down deep, glowing gentle but cold. It cries soft, like a goat becoming meat. Grass leans down the slope, down into the hose-house-hole. If the ladder goes in, the ladder goes out, right? Deep scratches flow down the dirt—boot and hoof prints, feathers and leaves. Black puddles sit in some, with holes in the ground like rakin’ the failed garden. What small grass there is is slimy, it’s dark under the trees. I should go back to Mama.

The ladder is solid. It don’t move when I step it up top, it don’t cry neither. Mama’s gonna whoop me if I get home no-goose. I grab the basket in my mouth, lantern inside. I can use both hands.

 

My feets slip the last rung—there was no rung. The wood crackled and whined in the deep, the floor so wet, so muddy. My feet disappear in muck, my pants turn black and sticky on my skin. The air taste like coins and meat-shed and poo. “Mama?” I talk out the hole.

“MAMA!!”

I yell, I hear myself yelling, but no one yells for me.  The trees smother me, there’s no sun.

“mama?”

I try to climb and hold, but there’s nowhere to dry my tingly hands and I’m cold. The basket fell wet too, lucky the lantern still shining. An egg broke on it, dirty red yolk dripping out gaps in the reed. “mama..” I’m not crying, I’m not. Mama gonna whoop me for a broken egg.

My lantern light so small, the hole becomes a cave in the tall-tall hill. I shake the dirt off and hold it careful, look around. The air so thick with wet, the flame don’t reach far. The bottom-hole muck is green and black, grass and flowers and leaves and branches, old and rotten collecting with the water. It tastes bad in the back of my throat. Manure pile and old casserole bad. The rock walls sweating heavy, wooden scraps covered in white strings smellin’ spoilt. There’s a donkey cart a few steps out the mud covered with the cotton and mould, cotton and gnarled stringy mushrooms reaching out. It sits on a tiny wooden railway, hardly attach to the ground. Red metal holds it together, but it’s falling soon. I see little bats on the ceiling, bats sleeping. They don’t mind nobody. Bats on the ground too, not moving. Something inside the cave crying for me, little green light floats inside and away—someone home inside can help me to mama. I walk in, careful with my naked slippy feet.

The ground messy with rocks and slime, and the hole keeps going. I follow the little railroad tracks, the longer they run the straighter they get, still broke. Old logs frame the cave, the sides and top. They’ve got the cotton too. It smells like bad fish and Mama’s perfume, and coins in your mouth. One of the big hoses sags from up top, it breaks by the floor—fresh outside air comes in when I breathe deep, but there’s no breeze. The stink grows the deeper I go. My feets and legs get pinched and needled, but I can’t see no bugs nor rats on me. There’s big metal curves and hammers leaned on the walls, with piles of yellow-white sticks arranged like men—the piles smell the worst, eggs left in the sun too long.

I find a Goose lay flat against the wall, half a goose missing, and sleeping cold. Her feet prints drag and flap their webs across the floor, body slid too. I almost tossed on her, but no food to toss—I don’t get hungry no more. The air taste as bad as it smell. I saw that Goose weeks ago, she drink too much water from the crick and go blind Mama says—don’t be a Silly Goose, Mama always says. The more I walk, the more bird I find. Another red plate read “B A D  A I R”, I know “BAD”, that’s me. A goat’s hooves on the ground, its horns and head bones too, no body, clean and old.

My light do little to show where I’m going, forward and backward look the same—only tell is the accordion hose, it ends in a messy pile by the wall. My flame gets smaller but there’s lots of oil left. The outside light is far away, and the ground wetter, feet wet and covered with trapped rain. The water collects into a pond, I wade up to my tummy, the floor covered in sticks and soggy cloth. I feel little feet and mouths on my underwater skin, but fish don’t live in caves. He doesn’t talk, and smells like sick. The little lights dance around my eyes just out of sight, green and white, I keep going. Crabs or cockroaches scuttle on the walls stealing my dancing stars.

The floor turns into a little hill once the water is deepest, the walls still sweating and bouncing my light. Little rains come down from the ceiling and kiss me, they dance with the lights. I climb the little hill deeper inside, careful—I hold the basket and lantern in my lips again, they taste like goose-house floor and old spoons. It’s slippy but rough, I use hands and feets to climb like wiggly newts—and then the hill stops flat. I sit, soaked and disgusting in my good dirty clothes. “I’m not letting you in the house looking like that!” Mama would say, “I told you to shovel manure, not roll in it!” Mama would say. I hear Mama but I know she’s not here for me.

I look on, and the water pools again. The water wriggles with a strange life, and the green light creatures flicker underneath it. I see their little bodies swim like giant diving beetle spiders—I never seen the lightning creatures so close before, always in the corner of my eyes.

The water fell and put my lantern out. It was dark ‘cept the bugs, boiling the water at the end of each slope, crawling up the slope and crawling up me and talking my name. I turn to go away, to go back call for Mama in the hole again, maybe Mama looking for me now. But pool behind me boils with critters too, boiling and angry and loud. The floor so slippy and my feet so cold and needly my head so dizzy I fall and the water eats me up. I try stand but can’t feel. The water so thick so cold, I can’t see can’t breathe—I call for Mama but the critters steal my voice and water fill it with muddy cold. They bite me and eat me and it’s cold, I hear Mama yelling for me in the water. They put the lightning in my chest and it burns so hot I want to sleep. It hurts to look for Mama so I stop looking. The water air tastes like the crick and the lights go out.

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